Leaving New York
by Meredith T. Tasaki
Summary: AU, futurefic, character death, Carmela/OFC. When mercenary Carmela agrees to take on a young wizard client, the job starts striking a little too close to home...


This is the extent of what most people know about Himura:

She is humanoid.

She is a mercenary.

She is, by all accounts, one of those few mercenaries who actually mean it when they say, "I will only kill if there is a just cause".

If she decides you are a just cause, you will, no matter who you are, be dead.

She will, they say, show up at your home (it won't matter how heavily guarded it is). You will hear the click of a safety switch behind you. Some say she'll be chewing bubblegum; most say she'll have an iPod; and everyone agrees that when she pulls the trigger, she'll be smiling.

This is the extent of what most people know about Carmen Ramirez:

She is a student at the Rirska Quadrant University, the one on Rirhath B, a short ride away from the Crossings.

She's majoring in Cultural Comparison, with minors in Magology and Military History.

She is one of the best underground chocolate dealers on the planet.

When you're having a craving, you'll probably be able to find her at the Miko bar in the Crossings. She'll be smiling, joking with the bartender (whether she knows that said bartender has a crush on her is anyone's guess), and she'll have a bowl of bluenuts in front of her.

If you can't find her there, you won't be able to find her at all.

This is the extent of what most people know about Carmela Rodriguez:

She's off at university somewhere (her parents are always a bit vague about which one).

She had an enormous fight with her sister Helena before she left-- apparently they still haven't made up.

Her parents are always sending her enormous care packages, which seem to consist mostly of chocolate. Understandable, because

She hasn't been the same since her brother died.

This is what you need to know.

_just the way that her hair fell down around her face_

_and I recall my fall from grace_

_another time-- another place--_

It's really a miracle she has any street cred at all. Or, at least they'd think that back on Earth, where gangs and crime and toughness are all just the stupid crap boys do to try and prove they're not women. (Which is why the gay Mafia porn project she's working on is really a public service.) But here, things get a little odder. She can be sweet, love kittens, enforce a strict morality everywhere she goes, and murder while blowing bubblegum. Those traits don't have to be contradictory here.

She first saw this place in the middle of a war, but she knew even then it'd be her home.

The girl is pale and waifish and adorable, and passes by two slavers, seven perverts, and four murderers (allowing for a little overlap) by the time she gets to Himura's stool. Each one of them stares after her with a calculating look in their ocular organs until their gaze falls upon Himura's cheerful smile and they instantly look back to their drinks. There's a truce she has with them, they know, out of sheer practicality; but it could very easily be broken. And while one of them would probably manage to kill her eventually, none of them wants to be in the vast majority she'd take out first.

So the utterly ridiculous kid makes her way safely to the stool beside Himura. "I need help," she says, and the voice matches the face. How is this kid gonna make it another twenty years?

Same way everybody does. Or doesn't. "Odd kind of help, if you're looking in here."

"I don't have anywhere else to go." She looks away, and her light brown hair falls across her eyes, and Himura knows if she stays in here much longer even she won't be able to protect her.

"That's hard to believe. This is _not_ the kind of place you should be in."

"I..." She swallows. "I need... I need to know what to do about someone. A wizard."

Good lord. "I don't do wizards, honey," she says abruptly. "You're on your own."

"Do? I don't-- _what_? I don't want anybody _killed_! Is that what you're talking about? _No!_ I'm a _wizard_ for god's sakes! I--"

"Sweetie, could you shut up before _everyone_ here hears your life story? Now that you know what kind of bar this is?"

The girl pales sheet-white and settles back down immediately. "I... I have... It was going to be _magic_, say the words and anything'll happen, why didn't I think how hard it might be to figure out the right spell?"

Because Himura is and was Carmela Rodriguez, the sight of a young wizard in peril cuts through her defenses like kryptonite every time. "What's going on?"

"I... my Advisory. His name is Aaron Lawrence. I think he's... working for..."

Wise of her not to say that name in this place. "Why do you think that?"

"It's just... so many people in my area... On their Ordeals, right? So many of us are disappearing."

"More than normal?" There might be an edge in her voice. She has an issue or two with wizardry.

"A lot more. I know it could be a fluke, but-- he keeps watching me, like-- I don't know. It feels wrong. _He_ feels wrong, to me."

She resists the urge to roll her eyes because this girl's obviously terrified, but really, weren't wizards usually a little more articulate than this? Isn't it a job requirement? "Like, perverted wrong, or incompetent wrong, or--"

"No! No. Like-- overshadowed by the Lone Power wrong." She squirms miserably on her stool.

"So why don't you take this up with your local Senior?"

She squirms more. "He always seems so... Oh, god, I don't know. I don't want to bother him, I know that sounds stupid. I tried talking to other advisories though and they said they don't think anything's wrong and I shouldn't worry about it."

"Do you have any idea what he could possibly be doing?" _No_, she answers herself with a mental sigh.

"I don't know how he can be doing it, because I know someone would've been noticed... but... things have been following me."

Like Hoeid the Kirfkian slaver, she notes, as the pelican-like creature stumbles (half-drunk, as always) into the bar. "Was that just when you came here?"

"No. It's everywhere. There's-- it's mostly squirrels on Earth. And whenever I meet with other wizards, they always look as if they're watching me-- like they think I might be planning something, or doing something, or like someone told them to watch me, or--"

The girl has no proof whatsoever, Himura summarizes, and she never will; all she has is a _feeling_, and it that really worth wasting god knows how much of her time and effort over when she could be changing the future of the universe in great and subtle ways?

"Okay, clearly there's something wrong with one of you," she says. "So yes, I'll go to the bother of finding out which one it is. You'd better hope it's not you, sweetie, but I'd hope you'd have the sense not to wander into a seedy bar in the Crossings looking for help if you weren't _damn_ sure, because if you don't, you're not gonna make it to your Sweet Sixteen. Now go home to your mother."

"You'll help me?"

"Yes. And you can pay me in chocolate. We'll work out an installment plan. If you think I'm kidding, look it up in your manual. Now get out of here _really quickly_ before someone gets drunk enough to risk trying to hurt you."

"I--" That gets the girl out of her seat quickly enough, but damn it, she's still hesitating. She probably _won't_ make it to sixteen, god save her. "Thank you."

"You're welcome! Now go!" Himura waves her away irritably.

Because everyone changes the future of the universe in great and subtle ways, even if they're not trying to; and you can never tell which domino will mean the most.

--

_I'll become what you became to me_

She got into this business mostly by accident. She'd been accepted into the University, and she'd just arrived to get her living arrangements together; and she'd gone into a restaurant purely to indulge her nostalgia. Carmela didn't beat herself up over things, but she did like to draw them out like a blade every once in a while; just for the razor-edge sting, because the whole point of pain was to remind you how you'd been hurt. Not feeling any was just as dangerous as feeling too much.

So she went in and ordered some blue noodles and ate, twining the memories around her like rose vines. If she thought about the time they spent here, just him and her and Nita and once or twice Dairine with her whatever they'd finally decided they were to each other, she could think about the happy parts and the sad parts and on occasion the horrific parts, which weren't fun, but were at least honest, unavoidable, unlike the knives her sister had stabbed into her back.

So she'd sat there way too long and she'd paid and she'd stepped out into the cooler air of the main concourse. Rirhath B didn't really have a rush hour, given the variety of its clientele, but this happened to be an unusually quiet time, which was how she heard the person crying by the luggage rack.

Carmela probably should've been doing other things, but the lessons she'd learned were still shining brightly in her mind (because they never would truly fade), so she really didn't give a damn. The person was a young woman-- dear god-- a young _catgirl_, almost exactly like the manga-ka had dreamt of, except those catgirls usually had bigger eyes and cuter ears and never sounded quite this broken.

So Carmela sat beside her and put a hand on her back and said, "Oh, sweetheart, what's wrong?"

The girl jumped almost a foot and stared back at her in devastated shock-- slit-pupiled eyes a shade of blue that just did not naturally happen on Earth, though you'd be hard pressed to explain exactly what was off. "I-- what?"

"You're sitting here crying. Something's clearly wrong. I want to help. If that's against your culture or something, feel free to show me off, but--"

And then the girl had started sobbing again, this time grabbing onto her and getting her shoulder very wet in a way that Carmela would've probably lost patience with fairly quickly before she'd been on the wrong side of it herself.

So the story came out, slowly, but it was the sort of story that kept you on the edge of your seat. The gripping kind involving death, a little abuse, and the sort of laws Earth hadn't seen since Sumer. No; that wasn't quite true. Hadn't Prohibition been about a bunch of wives who were sick of their husbands drinking all their money away? And the roundabout way of stopping it must have been the only way they had, or the only way they could think of.

That was the secret: thinking outside of the box. That was why interspecies contact usually proved so fruitful (if you could get past the awkwardness and the occasional intergalactic diplomatic or military incidents); someone else could look at your problem from an angle you couldn't see, and say "What about this?" and suddenly everything would fall together.

Arrya's problem was that her gambling-addict father was exploiting a long-ignored loophole in her planet's law to sell her into what anthropologists would call "concubinage" to pay off his debt.

Carmela's solution involved her plasma dissociator, a few statistics on the profitability of the black organ market, and a smile.

The next day, the dirty old man had fired his lawyer, a law student had filed University work-study citizen status on Arrya's behalf, and the referenda demanding a repeal of the law finally had all the time they needed to circulate.

There was supposed to be a downside. Carmela couldn't see it.

It was as close to a happy ending as you got, she figured, because Arrya was happy, and she got free snacks, and no one even had to die. Shit, even if she'd had to kill the bastard, it would've been happy enough for her.

Carmela had plunged into the grays of life and found them comfortable.

So she upgraded her dissociator, started stockpiling her chocolate, and split her free time between Kerok's Den of Iniquity and Arrya's shifts at the Miko.

It's been working for her ever since, because she finally realized: this was why she never found wizardry. This was what she was good at, mysteriously equipped for.

This was what she was meant to be.

--

_it's easier to leave than to be left behind_

_leaving New York, never easy_

_I saw the light fading out_

Fortunately, Carmela has sources. Quite the networker is she.

It helps that she's fluent in the Speech, and the manual is technically open-source. Not that it usually works out that way in practice, but a certain friend of hers made sure Carmela's laptop will always be able to do things it shouldn't...

So she goes into the Directory, and he's easy to find; ironic this kid happens to be from New York. Well, it's a big city. She looks up the kid too, though that takes a bit longer since she has to scan through all the pictures. Alice Bering. Like the strait. Seems appropriate somehow.

She glances through statistics (she only has to ask, and Ami-chan will compile whatever she wants; she totally owes Dairine free chocolate for life, but she knew that already) -- they do look a little suspicious, but she's not sure it falls outside statistical norms. Everyone dies, after all; more young wizards die than any of them want to admit; oh, they'll _say_ they know it, and believe it, but knowing a fact and truly _understanding_ its significance are two entirely different things. Still, it's suspicious.

But there's only so many things you can learn from a book, even this one.

She'll have to go back to New York.

She loved that city, once; or at least she thought she should. It was all busy and multicultural and high fashion and she was still young enough to think, _yeah, that's what I am, that's what I want_, and she'd have said the only place that could be more suited to her was Tokyo. Back in the days when she was all boys and clothes and phone calls and as many shades of neon pink as she could find. Not that there's anything wrong with pink. She still likes pink, a lot. Except.

Except it stands for a distraction. Something fluffy and sugar-sweet and somehow _elsewhere_, not false, but not her, either. Like unicorns; beautiful dreams; soft, fluffy clouds you could hold over your own face and not even notice as you smothered.

Nothing's wrong with escapism, not at all; she thinks it's important, maybe even one of the most important things; she indulges in it herself _all the time_ (e.g. all the time she spends sorta-accidentally reading fanfic when she should be writing essays); but-- not like that.

The only valid reason to escape reality is so you can go back to it after a while, refreshed.

But she'd so hoped to escape this particular reality a little longer.

Because Kit loved New York. Too goddamn much.

And that means she has to, too.

-

_nee, watashitachi yarukkyanai ne?_

_(Well, we'll just have to do it, then, won't we?)_

_tatakitsubushite yaru wa, kono te de aku wo--_

_(We'll smash them, destroying that evil with our own hands!) _

Lawrence is tall and fairly good-looking, if beaky-nosed, and she's pretty sure he's evil. Something about the eyes, maybe. It's a gut reaction, and so it technically could be wrong-- though it never has been before-- so she doesn't put much stock in it. Just thinks _oh yeah, he so totally did it_, and waits to see what'll happen. She's pretty sure she could change her opinion in an instant if the evidence came up, but again, she's never actually had to, so it could just be wishful thinking.

She does want to get the hell off this planet, so that could be screwing with her head.

_How do you get evidence that somebody's screwing with the Asshat Who Invented Death_? she thinks; and the answer is, _you don't. You have to get them to confess. _

So: this was gonna take some work. And _psychology_. _Arigatou gozaimas', Arisu-chan._

Then again, Alice is the one who got her into this; why not give the girl a little hands-on experience?

She pulls out her cell phone and dials the number from the Book interface. As she glances back down at Ami-chan's screen, she realizes the only number there is under "home". What the hell kind of girl in this day and age doesn't have a _cell phone_? At least a crappy little Barbie one that can only call 911 and home!

Ridiculous. But all she can do is cross her fingers and prepare to talk as high and as quickly as she can.

"Bering household, Emily Bering speaking..."

Good god, the woman answers the phone like a secretary. "Oh, hi!" she says, trying not to squeak. "I'm looking for Alice?"

"What for?"

"We have a group project, in Science, and I was wondering if maybe we could talk or get together to figure out what we're gonna do?"

"Ah. Your name?"

Secretarial. "Carmen-- Carmen Himura? We don't really know each other that well, it might take her a sec to--"

"Alice!" the woman called. "Some girl is calling about your science project!"

"Wha?"

"Carmen Himmurra!"

"I-- I'll get it!" A sound of running feet. "Yes, I've got it, mom, I've got it-- Hi, Carmen! Ah, I hope we can work really well on this project together, I don't want to make a B in this class and Mr. Rogers is so tough! Have you figured out what we need to get from the..." Alice's voice trailed off, and Carmela knew from experience the girl was scoping the room to make sure her mother had really left. "She's gone. Why are you CALLING me here?!"

"'Cause you don't have a cell phone. What kind of luddite are you?"

"What? Oh, god, maybe I asked that wrong-- _why are you calling me_?"

"If you want the man caught, you're gonna have to help," Carmela says, grinning into the phone. "That's the way the world works, sweetie. Wizardry, doubly so. This isn't the sort of thing you can prove. We're going to have to figure out what he's doing and how we can get him to confess... or convince Death himself that he's about to be exposed, so he abandons the wretch to his fate..."

"Confess?" Alice squeaks. "_Him_? He's-- he's _unflappable_! You don't know him, he--"

"Then we're gonna have to catch him! He's got to commune with the dark forces sometime, right?"

"Commune with the--"

"Oh, stop whining at me! We're going to start a stakeout!"

"What?!"

"Lord, child, what _now_?"

"Two things. 'Stakeout'?"

"How else are we going to get our information?"

"And, 'we'?"

"Alice, come on, stop passing the buck! You found this, you brought me into this, you've got a connection. Are you telling me you want me to do all the dirty work while this man rigs kids' _Ordeals_?"

There's a silence, and the sound of a sigh into the speaker. "Mom? Can I go to the library to study with Carmen? This project is _insane_, he wants a mobile and ten sources and everything, and there's a presentation... We really have to meet, mom... Okay! I'll be home by eight!"

"I'm right outside your building," Carmela says cheerfully. "You've done the right thing."

"I really hope so," she says, and hangs up. Just like that.

_No good deed_, Carmela thinks, and turns to watch for Alice at the door.

--

_I don't know how_

_you were inverted;_

_no one alerted you..._

"How is this helping us?" Alice asks, after the first hour.

"It's a stakeout, child, have some patience!" Though she has to admit it's been damn boring watching him sit there in front of his laptop for an hour. She wonders if he's typing something evil.

"But, what is he going to do that we'll be able to see? What's the chance he'll do it today? We're going to be here for _weeks_!"

All valid points, but: "How else are we gonna get any dirt on him, huh? We've already got all that statistics can tell us. And we can't very well go out and interview people; I don't think an interview between me and the Lone Power would go very well, does he like you any better? I mean it, Alice, if you have any better ideas, please speak up."

Alice falls silent, no doubt trying to think of a better idea. Carmela's been casting about for one herself, but to no avail.

Lawrence shifts on the sofa, puts a hand out to grab his glass of water, and Carmela thinks, _So this man is an agent of evil?_

But no, you can't judge anything by appearances. She knows that better than almost anyone.

But, still... Wizards were _opposed_ to the Lone Power. What could induce one to turn like this? Obviously, it happened, and with some frequency, but...

_Hey... that could be important._ Carmela pulls Ami-chan out of her bag and flips up the screen.

"I-- hey! You're supposed to be watching this too!" Alice smacks her arm.

"I am! I'm trying to do a little research here, okay, kid?"

"Stop calling me 'kid'! It's very degrading!"

Carmela rolls her eyes. "Just watch the boy, okay? I'm trying to do very important things."

"...check your e-mail..." Alice mutters. Sadly mistrustful. A pity to see in one so young.

Carmela strokes the edge of Ami-chan's screen. "Come on," she murmurs, to Ami, and to Anyone. "Give me something, here."

Whether it's due to Dairine's leet skillz or Somebody out there listening, Lawrence's file is a lot more detailed now than it was yesterday. She smiles, faintly, and begins to read.

_Something that would tempt him into the service of the Lone Power; something that would break his will, break his heart..._

-

_when there's no one left to leave you,_

_even you don't quite believe you,_

_that's when nothing can deceive you..._

"Do you think I'm crazy?" says Alice, apparently to the hedge, because that's the way she's facing. Carmela hears anyway and decides to answer, just for the hell of it.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"But I'm paying you to be here. It's like having a shrink who loves you, or a lawyer who thinks you're innocent."

"You haven't paid me yet. Besides, I can get chocolate from anywhere. I don't do things for the money, sweetie. Life's too short for that."

"So, you're saying you really believe me?"

"Yep."

"But, I don't even believe me. I mean, look at him!" She gestures at the window they're watching. He certainly looks innocuous enough, at the moment, with his reading-glasses on and his nose buried firmly in one of those telephone-book Manuals. He's talking and smiling with the teenagers and they're talking and smiling back, and it's damn hard to get teenagers to do that, even wizardly ones. All the wizards in the group are older than Alice, and in the whole world, only the two of them can see anything wrong with him.

"You don't even believe yourself anymore? That's sad. Who else will, then?"

"That's my _point_!"

"Try this," says Carmela. "Close your eyes."

Alice obeys, and the thought of tricking the buttoned-up little wench flashes very briefly through Carmela's mind. "Think back," she says. "You came all the way to the Crossings, you must have had reasons. Things that happened, things you saw. What were they? Don't tell me; just think of those."

There's a look of fierce concentration on the girl's face that Carmela has to admit is faintly endearing. So earnest, this one, and so dogmatic. She hopes it's the second that'll fade with time instead of the first. "Think of all of that. To hell with what you see. What do you _know_?"

"He's doing something," Alice whispers. "There's too many gone. There's too many things shadowing me..."

"Why are you two sitting here behind a bush?"

Alice screeches and jumps what's got to be at least six inches; Carmela, more inured to such things, just sighs imperceptibly and turns to the confused dark-haired boy with a smile. "Poor planning," she says.

--

_sooner or later God'll cut you down_

The boy's not going to let them go without a fight, and Carmela doesn't fight children. She wouldn't stop Alice, but apparently Alice doesn't really fight at all. The boy's also late for Lawrence's little study group or Hudson Bay Cleanup Committee or whatever the hell it is, and he trusts Lawrence too much to ever believe them. From what little Alice blurted out before she could stop her, he's already too suspicious to let them walk away; which means they're seeing Lawrence now, about a week earlier than she would've preferred.

"What do we do?" Alice whispers. "He'll get the whole story out of me, I know he will...!"

Carmela doesn't have much trouble believing that. Which means if she's going to get him to confess, she has to do it now, and the only weapon at her disposal (besides her dissociator, which is, she'd admit, plan B) is the sheer brute force of her awesomeness. Well, could be worse odds.

"Jeremy?" says Lawrence, puzzled, rising from his seat. "Alice, what are you doing here?"

"I, uh, wanted your advice on that emissions-reducing routine I was working on!" Alice lies cheerfully. Alice is among the worst liars Carmela has never had the pleasure of facing at a poker table. "About the oxidizing--"

"I thought we were going to talk about that Tuesday?"

"Uh--"

"And who's your friend?" He shoots her a quizzical look, but there's calculation underneath; she's learned how to see it.

"Hitokiri Battousai," she lies cheerfully. "Naze de gozaru? Sessha wa--"

"Alice," Lawrence says firmly, turning back to the girl. "What is going on here?"

Carmela's about to jump in, but it occurs to her suddenly that maybe Alice needs this. She seems like a creature of rules and restrictions; what does she need more than to learn how to question authority?

If the Powers shape everything, like Kit said...

Alice swallows, shoots her a desperate, betrayed look, and takes a deep breath. "It isn't right," she says.

"What? What isn't right, Alice? Is this about the project in--"

She cuts him off; Carmela approves, because with an audience, the last thing they need is even a flimsy assault on her motives. "There's too many gone, sir," she says. "Too many, too quickly."

A look of pain flashes across his face. "Alice, the Metropolitan incident was terrible, and I know how you must miss Melanie, but--"

"Not just that. The thing in the Bay; the Harlem incident; Aisha, Meilin, Satoshi, Elena, Ivan--"

"Alice--"

"Don't tell me statistics!" Alice cries. "You've been telling me statistics and I've been believing you but I compiled them myself, Aaron, and if this is an aberration, so's global warming. We haven't had death rates like this since Ellis Island, Aaron, and that was a one-time thing-- this may be slower, but it's growing, and it's growing _here_, and what arrogance led you to cover up your tracks so badly?"

_Ellis Island_, Carmela thinks. They already have a term for it. And it's so completely inadequate. The Dies Irae, Dies Illa, Solvum Saeclet in Favilla-- Ellis _Island_? Not to mention, Ellis Island was only where it _ended_...

"Look it up!" Alice yells at the study-group. "It's all there. Do the math! It can't be a coincidence! All these people, the same Advisory--"

"Wait a second," says Lawrence, an utterly appalled look dawning on his face. "Are you saying-- Alice, are you saying you think I'm _overshadowed_?"

"Yes," Alice says, more bravely than Carmela would've given her credit for, as the other children gasp in shock. "I don't want to believe it, but that's all it can be."

"Alice--" He shakes his head, simply lost for words. It's an excellent act, Carmela thinks; the only flaw is that it's too perfect. No anger whatsoever; just shock, hurt, a hint of betrayal. Perfect. "Alice, do you realize what you're accusing me of?"

"About the worst possible crime I can think of," says Alice, quietly. "Yeah. I actually thought about it. Why?"

"Alice, why would I do something so-- so horrific? _Why_?"

He doesn't expect her to have an answer, and she doesn't; Carmela can see the helpless anger in her eyes before she takes her turn. "Amanda?" she says.

His face goes completely still, and she breathes up a word of thanks to Whoever, because that was her only guess and she has no idea _how_ the hell she would've bluffed it if she'd been wrong. Though, she's not entirely sure how she'll bluff it now she's right, either. "Excuse me?" he says. "You never did explain who you are."

_Oh, nice try_, she thinks. _You should've figured someone like me would be set on your path sooner or later..._ "Amanda Wakefield?" she says. "You know-- your fiancée?"

-

_I'm giving up on love_

_'cause love's given up on me_

She's always had a talent for reading the currents in the room (almost as prodigious as her talent for disregarding them), and she's concentrating on them now, as carefully as she can. If she missteps, she needs to know it instantly. If she hits a nerve, she has to know how and she wants to know why. And this Lawrence is a shockingly good actor, especially for a wizard.

But she's up to this. "Have you been reading my _bio_?" he gasps, appalled. "I don't even know you! Why would you violate my privacy like--"

"The Manual's open-source, Lawrence, and if you're an Advisory, you should know that. I don't have the right to look through the public record, now? What other rights would you deny me?"

"Tell me _right now_-- who are you?"

"Just your ordinary, bubbly little girl..." she says." Hates math, loves PE--"

"Are you quoting from the beginning of Card Captor Sakura?" one of the boys says suspiciously.

"Absolutely I am, because isn't it odd how he'll talk about anything but her?"

"Of course I'll talk about her," he says. "She was my fiancée. It didn't work out."

"Oh, but there was more to it than that, wasn't there?"

"Not really, no."

"See, that's where it's clear you must be lying, because there's _always_ more to it than that, and that goes double in relationships. You'd known her for a long time?"

"She lived next door," he says, and it's slipping a little, now; he sounds annoyed. "Yes. What does this have to do with anything?"

"You were engaged."

"Yes."

"She wasn't a wizard."

His fists clench; the power in the room curves a little her way. "No. She wasn't. I'm not going to put up with any more of this--"

"Really? Why? What harm can words do?" She smiles sardonically; a ridiculous statement to make in front of a wizard. She's seen what words can do. "Just simple English. She wasn't a wizard, and you were. But you loved her, didn't you?"

"Such is customary between fiancées. Would you please--"

"Can you really keep that sort of secret in a marriage?" she questions. "Can you even really keep it in a close relationship?"

"In a society that fails to accept wizardry, this is what we must deal with," he recites. Probably a line of his; probably what he tells the children; probably what he used to tell himself. But he's not telling himself that anymore. What happened to convince him it was a lie?

"I'm not a wizard," she points out. "I'm here. Because my brother told us what he was doing, and we accepted it. It took a little while, but we accepted it. We loved him. Didn't she--?"

"_That had nothing to do with it!_"

_Right_ on target. Carmela's always been proud of her aim.

"It's not that _simple_, you idiot!" he yells, stumbling through the words for the first time today, probably because they're the first he's actually felt, actually meant. "It's _society_! They made magic a thing of witchcraft and fairy-tales and if anyone takes you seriously, they'll think you're evil! It's ingrained in us since birth-- no one believes in magic!"

"Transubstantiation," she says.

"What?!"

"_Everyone_ believes in magic, of some sort. Whether they mean to or not. Whether they call it that or not. Besides-- where do wizards come from, if this society is so insurmountable? Does the stork bring them from some other world?"

"Wizards are special," he grates.

"And she wasn't?"

"She _was_. She _was_ special and how dare you talk about her under my roof? She was more special than you'll _ever_ be, than any of these ungrateful little--"

"But she didn't understand."

"I _told_ you--"

"She wouldn't believe you. Because of society," she interjects, before he can interrupt. "She wouldn't believe you. What did you have to do?"

"What else can you do?" he says, voice scathing. "What does the _Manual_ say to do? I had to erase her memory. I had to sit there and say the words and watch as I took that time away from her. We _are_ our memories. Erasing someone's memory is a terrible violation."

"But you had to do it. Because she wouldn't believe you."

"She shouldn't have had to believe me! She should have _known_! She should have been a wizard! She was brave and she was good and she loved to read and she was always looking, looking for those things beyond, but when I tried to tell her I could see them too, that I knew where they were, I could show her, she wouldn't believe me! She'd been promised too many times-- tried too many things-- she couldn't believe in _anything_ anymore, because those bastards decided she wasn't good enough for the truth. No matter how much she wanted it. No matter how much she needed it."

_Wanted, needed--_ the words link up with a lacuna in the file, his prior anger: _de mortutis nihil nisi bonum_. Never speak ill...

"And now she's gone," she says softly.

"They took her," he says. Lord, he's lost his head; he's lost all his sense of proportion, now, he's lost it. "Oh, they say it was Him, but They're all the same. They began as one and They end as one and he's one of them, always was, always will be, and what the hell can He do without someone's consent? They _took_ her from me. Because I knew They'd made a mistake. Because she would have believed."

_Those ungrateful little_-- "And all these children," she says. Prompting. In his state, it shouldn't take much.

"Who take it all for granted. They don't deserve it, they don't deserve any of it, they're chosen at random. It's a rigged game, kill some children and keep the rest to torment, that's all it ever was. _That's_ why only some have wizardry. It's just another way They screw with us. That's all!"

The reaction of the children, including Alice, to this blasphemy is almost comical. Might be, if it weren't for his tangible pain, for his terrible sins. Though, she wonders, what could his rationalization possibly be for...

"So why help Them? If They're just killing children, why help Them?"

He smiles, fractured and dangerous. "I'm not working for Them. I'm working for Him. He may be a son of a bitch, but at least the Lone One has the mercy to want to _end_ it. Death _is_ a mercy. It's the only way out. It's the only way to escape Their tyranny."

"...You think the Powers don't have dominion over _Timeheart_?" Alice squeaks. It is an obvious logical fallacy, but it's probably a bad idea for her to be drawing attention to herself right now. Carmela casts her eyes around the room for a distraction.

He laughs, bitterly. "I wouldn't know," he says, and the not-quite-hum of growing power fills the room. "Why don't you come back and tell me? After you and your friends here find out..."

Alice starts. "You _couldn't_. Here? So many?! They'll know! They'll know for sure!"

"Oh, it won't be _here_, of course. All around the city, different places, different times, different diabolical tricks of the Lone Power-- just more children dying, who the hell cares? Which of them will be so ignorant of their own guilt that they'll even look at the bodies? Your word against mine, and you know what they say about dead men..."

"They don't keep club minutes?"

Lawrence whirls around, a mad look in his eyes; Carmela waves the WizPod in her hand. Not even a bluff: one of the kids _had_ set his Manual to record, bless his or her anal-retentive little heart. Which means all of this, everything he's said, is on the record. _Permanently_.

He lets out what can only be termed a shriek of rage and lunges at her-- Carmela dodges, but Lawrence hits an invisible wall a few feet in front of her, and staggers back.

She glances at Alice; the girl is pale and shaken and mumbling something under her breath. If she's the only one out of all these children who's thought to do something, maybe she _will_ live to see eighteen. Or maybe that's the sign that says she won't.

Lawrence screams again, rushes at Alice-- Carmela rushes to intercept with a sudden bolt of terror. But that's needless, too; Lawrence hits another room, and she realizes at the same time he does that he's in a bubble. A force-field. She wouldn't have given Alice that much credit.

Maybe this is teaching the girl something. That is why these things are supposed to happen, isn't it?

Lawrence shoots her a glare of pure fury that almost looks _betrayed_ for a moment-- did he expect to be understood? Had he realized what she was and assumed she'd sympathize? Not in a million years-- and then he's gone. Alice didn't think to block that, but she's outstripped Carmela's expectations already.

She shoots a glance at Alice; the girl is paler than ever, and shaking-- probably not from the aftereffects of the wizardry, unless the kid was a serious lightweight. Of course, her judgment in that area is more than a little skewed... But she recognizes that look in her eyes. She turns to the other children, and her heart clenches inside her-- pale and shaken and terrified and betrayed, and no one should be allowed to do that. No one.

She wants to kill the son of a bitch. She could trace him-- her hand twitches toward her concealed dissociator-- she could track him, easily, easily, on this tiny planet-- a murderer of children: that couldn't be allowed.

And it wouldn't be. A bitter smile creeps across her face; the bastard has signed his own death warrant, and she doesn't really have to lift a finger. Such a high-status servant of the Lone One, his position now utterly ruined, with no place to hide in the universe, his mission failed? She doesn't have to lift a finger. Death will bend over backwards to find this man, no matter where he runs.

She doesn't have to lift a finger. Unless, of course, she wants to.

--

_don't seem to have that much to show_

_for all the hard work, the sweat and toil_

_you say, well that's right-- and you should know_

_you've been there before; you've basked in the glow..._

Carmela's never really enjoyed the clean-up. But who does? After the son of a bitch vanished, she was left with seven shell-shocked children and an itchy dissociator finger. So she left Alice to explain the situation as best she could (good for wizards to get practice at that, she'd rationalized, since they had to do it so often), and made for Lawrence's kitchen. The bastard didn't have any hot chocolate of his own, or apparently any chocolate at _all_ (which might explain why he'd gone bad, she thought), so she had to break into her own inventory to make everyone a mug. She's tempted now to get them blankets as well, but they aren't _technically_ victims of a natural disaster.

Close enough, though. "Overshadowed," says that one boy, again. "By the Lone Power."

"It isn't _possible_," that one girl insists, again. "He's a _wizard_! We work _against_ Him!"

"Oh for god's sakes, Lucy!" yells a different boy. "Were you _listening_ to him? He's evil! Get over it!"

"It can't be what it seemed to be!"

"If nothing's it seems to be, maybe the Lone Power IS just misunderstood! After all, all we've got against It is our own _experience_, isn't it? Who's to say all those things we've heard and seen and felt aren't wrong? I'm sure It's just a great big pussycat! Why don't you go and pet It?"

"_Enough!_" cries Alice. "I can show you statistics and I can tell you stories but isn't the evidence of your own eyes enough to convince you? He'd gone wrong. He was fixing our Ordeals."

"He _couldn't_ have," says Lucy, though now it sounds more broken, more like a last attempt to convince herself than a statement of fact. She knows that tone of voice.

"He _did_, Lucy," says Alice, in a patient but firm voice that Carmela again would have thought to be beyond her. This girl might have an interesting career ahead of her. "I didn't want it to be true, either, but he did."

"So who's this chick?" asks one of the boys. "She said she wasn't a wizard, so why's she here?"

"I hired her on Rirhath B," says Alice. "She's a _sherringmion_-- it's short for something the Manual translated as, I think, 'consulting-mercenary'?"

"Sort of like a PI with a gun," Carmela supplies.

"I thought PIs had guns," says one of the boys.

"Sort of like a PI with an assault rifle?"

"...Okay..."

"I hired her to help me get proof he was doing these things," says Alice.

"You know what? I'm gonna file this as my pro bono work for the year. You don't owe me a thing for this," Carmela decides. "Of course, should you decide to get me a little chocolate as a _gratuity_, I certainly wouldn't object, but..."

"What, really?" Alice stares. "Thank you!"

She waves it off magnanimously. No point in mentioning what even a cheap bag of Hershey's is worth on the open market. "It was true that my brother was a wizard. I can't bring myself to charge any kid wizard full price; you've got it tough enough already, yeah?"

"Was?" says one of the boys. Another elbows him, hard.

"Yeah," she says. "Was." She might drop his name if she didn't have the feeling they might recognize it. From _Ellis Island_. God, the things people come up with. This is a "Big Bang" level of understatement, in all senses of the term.

The pain of the elbow to his chest has apparently reminded the first boy of the rules of propriety. "So one of you should get in touch with a Senior, yeah? You can't let a rogue Advisory just go wandering around the city."

"Oh... yeah." The boy who'd tried to bring Lucy back to her senses straightens up and digs his iPod out of his pocket. Ah, of course, it's not an iPod, though, is it? Awesome how technology changes. She still doesn't have a clue why Kit didn't change over from his clunky old book format the second he had the chance. Maybe it had still been in beta. "...Could someone come with me?"

Three of the others volunteer; the others realize that they should probably go home, and Carmela expertly herds them all out the door. She closes it behind her with a sigh of satisfaction. Done.

Well, not quite. "I... I still don't actually believe he really did it," says Alice, quietly. "Isn't that silly? I'm the one who found out, I'm the one who went to all this trouble... And I still don't really believe it."

"Yeah, you do," she says. "You just don't want to."

"I can't believe I actually confronted him like that... and where the heck were _you_, by the way?"

"Cheering you on as you seized the opportunity to learn something from this god-damn catastrophe. Why?"

"I... _learn_ something?" Alice stares at her blankly. "I thought you were a mercenary, not a drug pusher..."

"See? You really have gotten more assertive." She beams. "Seriously, kid, did you think it stopped after your Ordeal? This wizardry's not just about what you can do for the world. It's also about what the world can do for you. How you can learn and grow from all the crap They keep throwing at you. Or die and grow, whichever works. Though I think the first one's the preferred scenario."

Alice's breath catches. "You're not saying... that all this happened so that I could learn... to question authority, or something."

"Of course not. I'm just saying that the world took this opportunity to fix it because it also gave _you_ something. And who knows what that something it gave you will wind up saving?"

Alice laughs, dismissive. "You're talking like I'm one of the Callahans or something. I was mid-power level even in my Ordeal. I don't do anything special."

Carmela's breath catches; she hadn't realized that 'the Callahans' had become a wizardly household name. She wonders whether or not Dairine knows at the same time as she has the flash of anger: is Kit's name remembered like that? It damn well should be...

Probably it is, so thank God she didn't mention it. "There isn't a wizard in the universe who doesn't do _something_ special, and you damn well better know that! So what if your pets aren't turning into gods and the Lone Power can't remember your name? You're still doing _damn_ special things! So don't whine!"

She regrets the 'don't whine' as soon as she says it, but then reconsiders; by the hesitating look on Alice's face, it may have been the only thing that raised her remarks above "dull platitude". "Yeah," says Alice. "There's so many people gone... I shouldn't be complaining, I suppose."

Carmela sighs and digs into her inventory one more time; the things she'll do for a young wizard. "Go home," she says, proffering the chocolate bar. "Eat some chocolate. You don't have to forget the terrible things that happened, but bask a little in your success for me, okay?"

Alice accepts, with a tremulous smile; rare is the girl who will refuse chocolate. "I'll try," she says. "Thank you, Ms. Himura."

Carmela grins. "It was my pleasure," she says, and fails to resist the temptation to ruffle the girl's hair before she walks away.

--

_home_

_(that's where the hurt is)_

Carmela sighs and digs out Ami-chan from her "slightly dimensionally transcendent backpack", as Dairine had put it. She should look up a street map-- this isn't her part of town, and she hasn't been anywhere remotely near here for years-- but she checks the time first. Five-twenty local; she checks another box, for the time at the Crossings. She should be at the Miko right now, talking her day over with Arrya, complaining about last night's episodes of _Shor'teka Falls Tragedy_ and _Doctor Who_, hearing about Arrya's crazy linguistics professor and the insane 'cog-quant' theories her psych professor kept obsessively quizzing them on, complaining in turn about the one Magology professor who thought the Powers (and all other non-tangible wizardly phenomena) were a collective hallucination... She's always looked forward to those nights. Arrya might feel grateful for her rescue, but it's never felt like she sees it as some sort of obligation; it just seems like Arrya just _likes_ her, for her own sake, and who can complain about that?

She sighs. The Miko. When did its blue lights, triangular seating, and gently waved countertops start to feel so damned familiar? Why is it even slightly strange to hear that the place she's headed _now_ is home?

Probably because they still haven't fixed the skyline, and she still can't go near Times Square, and Helena stays so close to home these days.

And maybe, she tries not to think, since the day she walked in the door splashed with two colors and four species of blood, and gave them the worst news of their lives.

A lot of things changed that day.

But where she's going is still home. Even if she knows she's never going to live there again.

-

_My mom once said she loves me just the way I am,_

_So I wonder what would happen if I became a clam?_

_If her son was gray and grimy,_

_Slippery and slimy,_

_An oversized hors d'oeuvre,_

_Would Mom still have the nerve?_

Carmela (and it's going to be odd, being addressed by that name again) knows that this visit could become a disaster in an almost unlimited number of ways. Many of these, of course, are totally out of her control. But she's going to do her best to _not say anything_ because she does _not_ like seeing her mother cry and she will _not_ stand for it happening again.

She visualizes an internal censor, complete with giant sledgehammer, and gives her blanket permission to stop her by any means necessary if she sees something stupid start to slip out.

"Mama!" That should be okay.

"Mela!" Her mother crosses what little distance lies between them, wrapping her up in a tight, tight hug. "I never see you anymore!"

The censor cracks down instantly on "Had you wanted to?" and replaces it with "School's so hectic, and worldgating's not cheap..."

"I know, I know. But I'm so happy to see you! I only wish Helena could come..."

The censor blocks "Me too, I think blood is just the color the living room needs" and supplies "Well, I'm sure she's busy."

Her mother gives her a suspicious look. "Are you all right?"

"Yes!"

"Riight." She still looks skeptical, but lets her go anyway. "Come on, help me with dinner and we'll talk."

"'Kay." Carmela follows. "Arroz con pollo!"

"What else, for a homecoming? As for dessert, well, I suppose you can handle that..." Marina gives the rice a rather reproachful look.

"Ma, I already told you, it isn't drug dealing." The censor strikes 'quite' from that sentence at the last second. "I'm very careful not to sell to any species that processes chocolate as anything more intoxicating than alcohol; no matter who I am, the Crossings staff would have my ass if I did that."

"So, you're more a bartender?"

"What's wrong with that?" The censor decides mentioning how many perfectly nice bartenders she's known would create more problems than it would solve.

"...I suppose it's a traditional college occupation," she sighs. "I just don't want you getting into anything... less innocuous."

Like consulting-assassinship. Which is going to turn out terribly awkward, since she's pretty sure that's her vocation. Ah, well, if life were easy there wouldn't be a point to death. And she isn't _strictly_ an assassin. There's only been four times it's had to go that far, and each time, she had worked _damn_ hard to be _damn_ sure that was her only option. That was her job, or the way _she_ chose to do it.

A _sherringmion_ was really more a consultant than a mercenary, when it came down to it: they were hired to solve problems, by any means necessary. Since the fee increased with the difficulty and/or violence of the means, the clients as well were generally satisfied with the least drastic means possible. But Carmela has even more variables to figure in-- or possibly "issues" would be more accurate. She's internalized most of the wizard's code of ethics: she had to, to work her way around the Days of Wrath. She also has a fierce determination to screw over the Lone Power in any and every way possible.

But here's what even most wizards she's met have never realized about the Wizard's Code: it isn't _strictly_ against death. There are loads of loopholes, especially if you're trying to find them. For one, artificially extending a natural lifespan is generally frowned upon. For another, you can't just refuse to help something die if it truly believes it's the best thing. The overarching thing is the battle's already decided. But what she thinks of most is a truth Kit told her when she forced him to tell her about his Ordeal thingy, the truth that even lurked at the heart of every story after: _it's possible to defeat him. But usually someone dies of it._

Dying was often necessary to defeat Death; conceding a lesser victory to death and entropy was outright acceptable, and often the _only possible way_, to defeat the larger plans of the Lone Power. It was a balance-scale, a calculus; since you couldn't give him nothing, you worked to give him as little as possible.

And Carmela had realized, holding Arrya in the Crossings as the crowds milled around them, that if dying could be an acceptable way to defeat the Lone Power, there had to be circumstances under which killing was too.

There'd been killing in Kit's stories, even if he hadn't seemed to see it. She'd done some killing herself, in the War, because it had been necessary. There _was_ a calculus to it: some creatures, though not very many, did so much harm for the Lone Power when they were alive that he lost more if they were dead.

Aaron Lawrence deserves to die. But the Lone Power wants him dead, and she'll be _damned_ if she helps _him_.

It's a calculus, and it's easy to get wrong, so she tries to err on the side of caution; but there's been a few people, just a few, who spread such hate and death and, to ape Helena, sin, that she knew there couldn't be a better way. One life, for Life's sake. Kit had subscribed to that logic. So does she.

"Trust me, Mom," she says, because she could never find the words to explain the rest in words her mother wouldn't misunderstand, "the last thing I will _ever_ do is harm anyone. Me and the Devil? Not exactly on speaking terms." The censor warns against 'Even if he knows my name'.

"So no drug pushing?"

"Hell, no. Wouldn't give that bastard the satisfaction. So don't worry about me! I'm gonna be fine, Ma. Strange, probably, but fine."

"As if I'd ever had any doubt over the 'strange' part..." Her mother chuckles and turns back to the pot. "Pass me the salt?"

Carmela does, relieved that the hardest part of this visit is probably over.

"You know, Helena says she forgives you."

Her imaginary censor tackles her and grips her in a headlock, just to stop the screaming. _Don't. Say. Anything._

"Mela?"

"Did she maybe mention what she's forgiving me for?" Carmela manages, keeping her voice cheerful and even.

"That fight of yours... She said both your tempers were running high, of course, and she's sorry for what she said about you."

"Sorry for what she said about _me_?" She can't keep a slight emphasis from the last word.

"That's what she said. 'Tell her I'm sorry for everything I said about her'. She seemed to think you'd refuse outright, but I told her she was being ridiculous because you were a reasonable person and would take an apology when you got it, because family is precious and an apology is just icing on top."

She groans, leaning back against the sink. "No guilt_ there_ at all."

"I use what weapons I have." Her mother smiles at the chicken.

How can she say this? "Well, you can tell her I've already forgiven her for everything she said about me."

"Then maybe Thanksgiving--?"

"All the things she said about _me_," Carmela repeats, because she can't see a way around it anymore. "None of _those_ bothered me for more than a month. Sticks and stones; I'm not _that_ stupid."

"Then why the damn blood-feud?" her mother demands, pain in her voice. The truth wouldn't ease that pain. She can't tell it.

"The other things she said," Carmela answers. "That she's never apologized for. She'd know what I mean. If she'd say she'd been wrong about _that_ I'd never call her a whore again."

She winces, a second too late. Ah, well; sledgehammer notwithstanding, her internal censor can only handle so much at one time.

"_Don't_ call your sister a whore. Mela, what _is_ it that could _possibly_ be worth losing your only sister?" The rest of the sentence hangs in the air between them: _When your brother's already gone._

"Something I can't tell you, Ma," she says. "Something that tells me she's already gone. Look, I don't want this, okay? That's why I don't talk to her. I'm doing my best, Ma, so that our fighting doesn't affect you two. I know it's hard, but Dr. Phil says you'd rather be _from_ a broken home than _in_ one, so--"

An unladylike snort slips past her mother's lips before she finally gives in to the laughter. "What scares me most is I think you mean that."

"I do! I don't want to kill her! Especially not in the house! Either you'd have to clean up or you'd catch me and make_ me_ do it! I don't like either of those scenarios!"

"Well, I'm glad you don't want to murder your sister under our roof. I raised such _thoughtful_ children."

"Thank you!"

She just shakes her head. "Well, I know you'll make it up eventually. You're sisters, after all."

The censor stomps on "Yeah, okay, the very second she stops being a bitch" and substitutes a simple "Sure."

She's seen stranger things happen.

--

_And I've been riding on a ghost train_

_where the cars, they scream and slam_

_And I don't know where I'll be tonight_

_But I'd always tell you where I am_

She stares at the ceiling in the middle of the night and wonders why her bed doesn't feel like home.

She's gotten accustomed to different sounds, she supposes, different light, different planetary mass, and now the sounds of home don't seem entirely _right_ somehow. She'll get used to it again-- she spent her childhood in this place, after all-- but for now, it's keeping her awake.

Or that might not be it. It might be who isn't sleeping in the room behind the other wall. It might be the other elephant in the room-- the other missing child.

_Helena_.

She doesn't like thinking about Helena. No worse than the Lone Power, she supposes, but that it was her sister made it personal. And she knows exactly why Carmela's been furious. She knows exactly what she'd have to say to fix it. But she hasn't, and she won't, because she still doesn't believe it wasn't true.

Which is why Carmela hates her.

She sighs and rolls over on her side. Where would she normally be right now? She doesn't have Ami-chan on hand, so she can't check the real time at the Crossings... but that's not what she's asking, anyway.

She misses Arrya. She could talk about this kind of thing with her. She would've talked with her today, about everything and anything, and she's finding she misses the conversation almost like a fix. Even if Arrya doesn't know her real name, Carmela could tell her anything: it's usually hard not to. Isn't hard with anyone else. Carmela can talk and talk for hours without letting slip a true word about herself; she's done it. She prefers anonymity. Yet she's told Arrya so much.

Nice to have someone who'll listen to you. Well, Arrya is a bartender, so that is technically half of her job; but Carmela's watched her with the other patrons, and she feels pretty sure, they _are_ friends. Real friends, best friends. The person she talks to. Has helped, will help, has been helped by.

She's not sure she's ever talked to anyone else like that, come to think of it. Maybe Kit, maybe her family. Not her friends, none of whom she'd seen in years. And not the boys. The boys. She remembers the boys she used to play with. That's what it had been, really-- playing. She always feels just a little bit guilty about it, now, because she'd been experimenting on them, manipulating them, just for fun. Most of them probably weren't serious, either, and damn well shouldn't have been at their age, but she can't help wondering if she ever hurt anyone.

Really, her boy-crazy ways stopped when she'd snagged Ronan-- lord, had _that_ ever been a train wreck. The boy was pretty, sure, but too damn moody for her tastes. The accent wasn't so sexy once you listened to what it was saying, and he just... He took life too seriously, and didn't suffer fools gladly; he thought she was too frivolous, and maybe she had been, then, but she suspects it was really her unwillingness to live her life like she didn't enjoy it. No, that isn't fair either. They just weren't similar enough; they didn't see anything the same way. They lived in entirely different worlds. They'd dragged it out for a few months, but eventually he'd lost his patience with it, and she'd known in her heart he was right.

And after that, well... Her games had lost a lot of their allure. And then came the Dies Irae. She had no time for lesser games once she'd taken up her spot in the Great one.

She still flirts, of course, but not too much, because if she ever gets into a relationship, she wants to _mean_ it. None of this "one-night-stand" bullshit dumb college students (and other morons) talk about, like it's possible for sex not to mean anything at all. It always means _something_. Everything always means something.

Arrya's told her that on her planet, the planet of Slightly Telepathic Cat-People, coupling almost invariably winds up being a lifetime affair. Not always, of course; there's widowers and divorces and irreconcilable differences and those whose relationships slowly turn into different beasts entirely, from friends to rivals to enemies to lovers to fellow-warriors without ever entirely breaking apart. Arrya said that it always took her aback that other species thought that relationships could ever properly _end_. Death, hatred, alienation, all they ever really did was _change_. Carmela thinks there's a lot of truth in that.

She'd be in the bar with Arrya, eating blue peanuts and mocking the last episodes of Doctor Who and Tyapin Caverns and Shor'teka Falls Tragedy, and Carmela hadn't thought of it before as the highlight of her week, but apparently it is, since she's missing it so much. Arrya calms her down, somehow, lets her unwind-- and lets her wind up again in righteous anger and grandiose schemes, and somehow... She'll point out the logical holes in her fanciful assassination plots, but somehow, that's okay, because she never questions her right to be making them. Carmela knows damn well her moral code and general outlook on life is pretty damn strange, even on a galactic scale, but Arrya always seems to understand.

Arrya always says the University's emphasis on "leadership" makes her uncomfortable; she says she just isn't meant for it. _Independence? There's nothing wrong with that_, she remembers her saying, _but I don't have anywhere to lead anyone. I don't have that spark of inspiration. I'm the sort of person who can see a good idea and follow it forever. Implement it, modify it, pledge loyalty forever; I can protect a spark, but I don't have one. They seem to think there's something wrong with that._

Carmela thinks she probably wouldn't have understood it either, if she hadn't known Arrya for so long. The woman isn't submissive, just... subordinate? No, conscientious. Given a job at the Miko, she's always worked her tail off (well, not literally, thank god; she's got such a pretty tail) to ensure that it is done to the best of her capabilities; that the bar is always clean, the patrons always well-supplied and happy, the service always friendly and gracious. She might not be an instigator, but she's a sine qua non: she's a _nurturer_, and there's nothing wrong with that. Requires just as much knowledge and wisdom as the University's trying to teach its precious Leaders.

Carmela was never a leader, either, which is probably why she understands. She prefers to think of herself as a free agent; and if anyone else happens to follow, well, that's their problem to cope with.

She turns over, stares at the wall. She's tired, and she can feel her thoughts slipping toward chaos; if she can just stop thinking about it, stop realizing she's thinking at all, she'll be asleep in no time.

But why is it her thoughts keep slipping toward the Crossings, toward Arrya...?

-

_Helena_

_don't walk away_

_before you give me back my heart_

Carmela's sometimes wondered why exactly she's been able to hide the true cause of her blood-feud with Helena from her mother. Now, having explicitly told her that it's not anything the bitch said about _her_-- and why would she have held a grudge about _that_? With life this short?-- she'll surely figure it out any day now. Carmela's not sure she wants to be there when she figures it out, but then, she hadn't especially wanted to be there when it had happened, either.

It had been the kitchen, where it happened: she'd been clutching the counter with both hands, staring blindly past the foil-wrapped dishes from the neighbors and the reception, because apparently the natural response to death was to affirm life, and the natural way to affirm life was with far too much food. She'd heard Nita complaining about it, once. She'd been right. Not exactly surprising, given her vocations.

The light off all the foil was flashing in her eyes, aggravating all the tears; she knew Helena was across the island behind her, could hear her ragged breathing if she paused to listen above her own. But she'd been too wrapped up in her own grief to think about that.

Until Helena said, "Give me their names."

"What?" she'd answered, having no idea what the hell she could possibly mean and frankly too exhausted to care.

"Those two."

"What?"

"Carmela, those two god-damned homosexual pedophilic cult leaders who brought him _into_ this god-damned madness!" Helena cried. She had a way of saying "god-damned" that made you think she would never choose that word lightly; that she meant, quite literally, damned, by God, to Hell.

"Homosexual pedophilic-- _what_?!"

"_Those two_! You know he didn't just find a _book_! He had to be tempted _into_ it!"

"Into _what_?"

"_Witchcraft_, you stupid, stupid girl! They had to coerce him _into_ it and if it weren't for those--"

Carmela's jaw dropped. "You still think he made a deal with the devil!" she accused. "And you think Tom and Carl are gay!"

"What, and you _don't_?"

"Well, yeah, they probably are, but it's the pedophilia and cult associations that are reprehensible! And your mind is filthy!"

"It is _not_! And I call it like I see it and he's _dead_, Carmela! And someone has to pay for that!"

"How Old Testament of you."

"What do you expect, when dealing with witchcraft?" She threw up her hands.

"It wasn't witchcraft! It was never witchcraft! It was the _opposite_ of witchcraft!"

"That's what they _said_, but he's _dead_, Carmela! And--"

"Oh, in what universe does God never let His servants die? I will grab one of your books and read out the names of martyrs until you--"

"There's a difference in miracles and magic--"

"I'm not the one who doesn't get that--"

"He was _tricked_, Carmela, and so were you, and if there was _ever_ a day you weren't in Satan's service--"

That was when Carmela slapped her, because she knew what Satan did, now, who he was, and she could think of no worse insult.

"Do _not_ say that about me," she hissed. "And _never_ say that about Kit. Or I _will_ kill you."

That was when Helena slapped back.

Anyway, apparently it had degenerated from there until their father came into the kitchen to find Helena parrying Carmela's butcher's knife with a cheese grater. Surprisingly effectively, too. Bitch had potential.

The family had separated them, and Helena had gone back to college without killing Tom and Carl (because no one was foolish enough to tell her their last names or where they lived), and Carmela applied to Rirska and her rather astonishing personal essay, once it had been fact-checked, got her in.

And Helena was carefully apologizing for overreacting, to give their mother the impression that she was being the mature one, the conciliatory one, when she _still _thought that Kit had been working for Lucifer himself.

As long as the bitch believes that, Carmela will never be able to forgive her.

--

_sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole_

_just like a faucet that leaks, and there is comfort in the sound_

It's funny how when she's back on Earth, she doesn't even have a choice anymore: she's Carmela Rodriguez. Who of course is an excellent person to be, but also has... issues. A past. A memory that haunts her everywhere she turns in this damn place. An ache at the back of her mind, throbbing and stronger than the one she wakes up to every morning. Every building in this city, stained with blood-red light.

"Himura!"

Odd how hearing that name's a relief. She turns: there's Alice, though whether she's fallen into Wonderland or only now escaped it, Mela has yet to decide. But the waif looks furious and betrayed, so: "This is about that strange accident Lawrence ran into, isn't it?"

"_How could you have killed him?! That was what the whole thing was about! You made it worthless!_"

The kid's actually throwing delicate little fists at her; she catches them as she begins the explanation this kid will never buy. Well, maybe not never. You never know: she might live that long. "First, you have no proof that I killed him and you never will. Second, if I did it was my business and my business alone. You do remember how much you didn't pay me, right?"

"But--!"

"Third, "the whole thing" was about you learning to grow a backbone. Which apparently you've taken to heart, how sweet. Fourth, he deserved what he got, however he got it, so I _so_ don't give a damn, mkay?"

"But-- you're so trying to corrupt me! Ambivalence is one of the Lone Power's favorite tools."

"I don't deal with that person," she says, smile tight.

"You're an assassin!"

"Mercenary. Whatever he'd like to think, death isn't always his tool alone. Death can be subverted, like everything else. You don't live in a dichromatic universe, sweetheart; it's a fact you're gonna have to get used to. I'd start now, before the bleeding."

Of course, at the moment, Mela knows she has as much chance of convincing this kid she isn't an agent of Death as she had of convincing Helena that Kit had never been, either. Which analogy is not improving her mood in the slightest.

But now the kid's looking over her shoulder, and she's calling out to someone behind her: "Please, help me! She killed Lawrence, I know it!"

Mela turns around to see who the kid's dragging into this now, and there's a man with a mustache and salt-and-pepper hair and too many lines in his face. "Alice..." he says warningly, because Carl was always the marginally more testy one-- though the two of them were always very content people, so that wasn't saying much. She's been gone a long time, but it hasn't been that long. He looks a decade older than he should.

She gets an idea of why that might be, and her reaction's more visceral than she'd ever have dreamed: it's like a stab in the heart, a sock to the belly, Helena's slap in the face. _No_. It was wrong! Surely, surely not.

"But she _did_!"

"Can you prove that?" She knows she can't be right, but that look in his eyes is bearing her out; the look she's seen so many times before; but she can't be right.

"You could!"

"My jurisdiction stops at atmosphere's end, Alice."

"So it's not your _problem_?"

"Delegation is a fact of life, Alice. Go see your local quadrant rep."

"Will I have to fill out a _form_? In _triplicate_?"

Carl just sighs. "No. The world isn't perfect, Alice. I know you mistrust ambivalence, but there is such a thing as gray."

Tom and Carl. Like Ben and Jerry, Holmes and Watson, Mulder and Scully: you thought one name, you thought the other, because the other would usually be around soon enough. They had a bond. Half the street used to whisper that it was _that_ kind of bond, but Mela's long, long past the point where she bought into sex being love. None of it mattered. She'd just never asked; and if they had been it would be awesome, and _adorable_, and probably fodder for an excellent yaoi doujinshi or thousand (especially one with the dramatic twist of comparing all the secrets these wizards had to keep), but it didn't actually matter at all. Well, maybe a little to them. But _Tom and Carl_. If that pair were to be broken up, it would be like the core had disappeared from the earth.

"I don't understand," says Alice, a little petulant, but mostly just confused.

"I know. But I don't think I can explain it to you, not really. We tend to be dualists at first, because we have to be; it takes a lot of time to see around that..."

Dear god, he _is _gone. _No_. She blinks back tears, swallows down the lump in her throat, and tries again to convince herself that she's reading things into him, even though she knows she isn't. It shows up in the eyes.

"But file your paperwork," he says, eyes sad, because he was that young once.

Carmela was never that young.

Alice turns and runs away. Carl turns to Carmela, and she can't deny it any longer.

"When did it happen?" she asks, though the words turn in on themselves in her throat, treacherous, unwilling to be let out.

"A... couple months," he says, and lets out a breath and looks away. There's an empty look in his eyes that she can't believe he's showing her; but maybe she's the only person he _can_ show, because she's so fiercely gray she can't, she'd never dare declaim him.

Because she's the only person he can know for sure won't be disappointed in him.

"Business?" she asks, as if there were any doubt. No matter what it looked like, no matter what form it came in, it was a professional hit.

"There was... a thing, yeah." He doesn't volunteer anything else. He might, if she asked, but despite what Alice might think right now, she is not as monstrously evil as that.

"You still in the house?" she asks.

"Yeah. Yard's getting run-down." He pauses. "It was worth it. He made it worth it. He made it mean something."

She smiles weakly as the tears spill from her eyes, coming so suddenly she doesn't have time to even think of holding them in. So many meanings, those words could have; he used them one way; he meant them all.

She'd tell him the secret, but he knows as much as she does; she can see it in his eyes.

"That's good to know," she says, and brushes a kiss against his cheek. "Goodbye, Carl."

She's hurrying away, but she can hear him clearly at her back, soft and only a little aching: "Go well."

--

_I've been talking drunken gibberish,_

_falling in and out of bars_

_trying to get some explanation here_

_for the way some people are_

_how did it ever come so far..._

"Earth, huh? Visiting your family?" Arrya asks, and because she did, Carmela doesn't feel too guilty about nodding.

"Kinda awkward. They still want me to meet up with my sister. I wish I could do it for them, I really do; but I _cannot_ forgive her, unless she apologizes, and that crazy bitch is _so damn sure she's right_ she'll apologize when hell freezes over. So we would pretty much wind up beating the living shit out of each other, and so I think all in all it's better we just stay apart. Don't you think?"

"I think having your children murder each other would probably be more traumatic than them hating each other, yes." Arrya just smiles to herself. She's such a _stable_ person, when her father isn't trying to sell her into slavery. Hasn't hurt her sense of humor at all; it's amazing, really.

"And they've had enough trauma for one lifetime. I promised myself I'm gonna outlive them, and if Helena dares try to-- what am I saying? She doesn't take risks. Crazy bitch'll live to be a hundred. Did I ever tell you-- what happened? Or did I just hint around it mysteriously? Because usually I just hint around it mysteriously, and--"

"Carmen, don't worry--"

"--and I don't want to do that with you if I don't have to. Why should I? My brother. He was a wizard. He died. My sister went crazy and I came here. My parents-- stayed exactly where they were. Well, the same state, at least. They've moved, now. I wonder what they did with the alien cable?"

"Alien cable?"

"Kit. That was his name. He was messing with the TV and suddenly we're getting all this awesome stuff from all over the Arm." She smiles. "Ah, my first laser dissociator. You treasure memories like that."

"Oh, so _that's_ how the nightmare of darkness everywhere got started. I'd always wondered."

"Oh, yes, that's when my reign of terror began. Used to bug the hell out of him. It was fun." She smiles; it's a little lopsided, but it's still sincere.

"And he's gone."

"Yeah. They all die early. We all die, but-- they all die early. Tom Swale. _God_. I can't believe Tom's gone. He dedicated a story to my family once. We gave him the inspiration. By tying him up and accusing him of being a cult leader or a pedophile. Oh, and Helena thought he was a Satan-lover. Threw holy water at him and went out to find a copy of the _Malleus Maleficarum_. She probably has it, now. Probably's serving Satan very well with it. Maybe that's his plan with her; maybe he's starting another Inquisition. I don't know. I just don't know."

She hangs her head down; takes another drink, though she's already had a bit too much. "It was a damn good book, though. That we inspired. Turned into a short series. Fairly popular."

"I'll have to read it. You'll have to show it to me."

"Yeah." Arrya's called away by another customer and Carmela keeps drinking and by the time she comes back Carmela's pretty sure she's drunk.

"Carmen, I think you need to go home."

"Yeah, you're probably right." She tries to stand, and falls over on a couple of people.

"And I think I probably need to help you there."

"Yeah, probably." She just smiles and leans against her and lets Arrya take the lead. Nice. It's very nice.

The corridors are dark and almost deserted and Carmela is trying to figure out what the smell of Arrya's hair reminds her of when Arrya says, "Everyone thought I'd be a wizard."

Carmela stares, shocked to the heart. "So, they knew about it on your planet, huh?"

"Yeah. I've never understood how it could possibly be kept a secret. I was smart, I was bookish, I didn't seem too obviously narcissistic; it seemed like a done deal. Even to me. I kept expecting that the next book I picked up... But it never was."

"No?"

"Not that I remember, anyway. Maybe it was, once; maybe I read it and I panicked and I've been trying not to remember it ever since." She looks down, and away, because that's always been her fear, her secret shame: she was too cowardly for wizardry, too selfish, not strong enough, not good.

"It's not as easy as they pretend it is," Carmela says, in a voice that would be termed "sober" if she weren't so obviously drunk. "As they think it is. The simplest equation in the universe, you know? To give your life for others'. It's obvious. It's obviously right. They think it's simple. That's why it always gets them when they're still young enough to believe it's simple. When they don't realize how much other people care about them."

Arrya's head snaps up: she has never, _ever_ thought of it that way. "When they don't realize... how parents grieve when their children are gone."

"And everyone else." Carmela hugs her then, tightly, with the clumsy affection of the hopelessly impaired. "I'm so glad."

"Wha?"

"I'm so glad you didn't do it, I'm so glad. Because they all die, Arrya, they all die so quickly, and you'd probably be dead now if you'd done it, and I need you, Arrya, I need you here, I need you for myself, I think you're the only thing I have in the universe. You and my dissociator, anyway. I need you."

All Arrya can do is hug her back and try to swallow, because she thinks maybe that's the sweetest thing anyone who wasn't her mother has ever said to her. And she feels up to that-- being what Carmen needs. She thinks she could handle that. She thinks she could handle that for a long time. She rather thinks she'd never _not_ be able to handle it, but she's pretty sure everything she thinks about Carmen is wishful thinking. Still. There are moments when it seems possible. There are moments when it seems right within her reach.

"I'm right here," she says. "I'm always right here, love."

So she leads Carmen to her room and tucks the sheets around her and brushes a soft kiss against her lips. And then she leaves.

She's tipped her hand; now, she'll leave it up to Carmen.

-

_nothing can stop this_

_not now I love you_

_(they're not gonna get us)_

The halls that connect the University dormitories with the main building are fully about half as ornate at the Crossings itself. The University proper, of course, rivals it, though its styles are more archaic; apparently throughout the galaxy, no institute of higher learning can be bothered to properly refurbish a building before someone threatens to have it condemned. The sports budget, though, that's another matter completely...

Carmela shakes her head, keeps waiting. She feels an urge to check the schedule again, but she's got it memorized by now. Probably memorized it a long time ago, and she wishes she'd noticed sooner.

Arrya walks by, then, and she catches her arm. "Arrya!"

"Carmen?" Arrya smiles, mostly calm, but just slightly nervous; somewhere along the line Carmela learned to read that too, and why couldn't she have noticed it then? "I didn't expect to see you up at this hour..."

"Ah, humans sleep eight hours, remember?" And one of the many benefits of living on Rirhath B was the existence of an actual hangover cure. She's had only one or two occasions to avail herself of it before, but it is a godsend.

"Ah, yes. Did you sleep all right?"

"Yeah. 'Course, you did tuck me in."

Arrya blushes. "I thought you forgot everything when you got like that?"

"It's generally better if I pretend to. But no, I don't."

"Ah. Well. I'm sorry."

"Huh? What for? You didn't do anything to be ashamed of. Kind of a shame, really."

Arrya blinks, stares, and begins, slowly, to smile. "Carmen--"

"Carmela."

"Carmela?" She doesn't roll the r, but, oddly enough, she does roll the l, and Carmela finds she loves the sound.

"I thought you should know," she says. "Oh, and I sell black-market chocolate."

"And shoot people." Arrya nods.

Carmela's jaw drops. "I-- you _know_?!"

"Mm-hmm."

"How long have you known for?!"

"Three months after I got the Miko job?" She's smirking, now. Carmela grants she deserves it, but...

"...I was trying to keep that _secret_!"

"Oh, you are! You truly are. It's just, I pay a lot of attention to you."

She's blushing again, faintly, but she's not ducking her eyes away. She's learned so much, since she came to this place. She's learned so much already; what will she learn tomorrow? What's she going to do with that cleverness, that faithful diligence, that quiet, fearful passion?

Carmela wants to find out. She wants to watch it unfold, help it unfold. She wants to change the course of history with her, in ways however great or subtle. The ends don't matter, it's the journey, it's the _living_...

And if she could've realized this a few months ago-- but what's past is past. She cards her hands through Arrya's fine, soft hair, pauses just long enough to allow for a demurral, and kisses her. It's soft and it's sweet and just a little bit sharp, with Arrya's slightly-more-carnivorous set of teeth, and then her fingers brush the base of Arrya's ear and Arrya pushes her up against the wall and this is getting even more interesting than she'd thought it would be.

Arrya pulls back after a few more seconds, breathing heavily; Carmela wants to lean right back in and kiss her again, but it looks like she wants to say something, so she'll give her thirty seconds for politeness' sake before she acquaints Arrya with the wall she's recently come to know.

"I know I shouldn't ask for promises," she says, still a little too close for Carmela to easily focus on the words. "I hear, your species--"

"Screw my species, I don't know them," says Carmela, doing her best to pay attention.

"But, it's only been, a year and a half? Two? So many things could happen..."

Carmela brushes a strand of hair back over Arrya's ear. "Things always happen," she says quietly, because this is a moment that deserves some solemnity-- for Arrya, and for them, and for Kit, the precocious brat who taught her this in the first place. "What would be the point of promising if they didn't? A promise is what you want, what you're willing to fight every day to make true. I want you. For as long as you'll have me."

Arrya smiles, shakily. "Are you sure? After all, that's such a long time..."

"I should hope so," she says, and as far as she's concerned, the thirty seconds are up _now_.

She pulls Arrya back in, and Arrya has just enough time to squeak and start to giggle before they fall back into place. She cards her hands through her hair again and holds her tightly, kissing in the middle of the corridor, and yes, _yes_, it had damn well better be forever.


End file.
